Haha, do you plan on playing Persona 3 and 4, Klyde? I highly recommend them.

My summer of 2008 was nothing but persona 3 fes. I'll never forget it because I was on probation and had a curfew at the time so I was home early each night with nothing to do but play the beee-jesus out of it! I loved it. (still totally an akihiko fanboy to this day...)

Persona 4 I finally got to in fall of 2010. I remember it was then clearly because (ironically enough) I was playing it when I finally got off probation-LoL

Is it odd that I seem to recall periods of my life concurrently with the RPG I was hung up on at the time?? Anyhow...

While I enjoyed P3 a wee bit more purely for the cast, the gameplay and "tone" of 4 had me from the door. Both were fantastic games though, and probably the only 2 in my library of the last 10 years I really feel like giving a re-play. Partially because the stress of probation impacted my enjoyment of any leisure activity I tried to enjoy at the time and partially because I missed so much on my first and only play-throughs.

I also have to say that, hands down, they have the best soundtracks of any JRPG I played in the last decade IMO (a tall statement, I know)... the opening theme to p3fes still gets stuck in my skull from time to time.

On the note of p3 fes though... screw "the answer".... drove me nuts. I never did complete that extra leg of the journey and if/when I do replay it I want to go the psp route next time around.

And the last thing I have to say about it... in spite of all my praise of the two titles, I have to rank p2IS and EP to be my favorite amongst the three (I can't help but view IS and EP as one long game). As I have expressed already pages ago, I haven't been this wrapped in a game in all my adult life. I had actually gotten to the point where I really believed I simply could not enjoy games to same extent or degree I did when I was a kid until I played Persona 2. Now I know better... I just wasn't playing the right games :)

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I also have to say that, hands down, they have the best soundtracks of any JRPG I played in the last decade IMO (a tall statement, I know)... the opening theme to p3fes still gets stuck in my skull from time to time.

Even though I enjoy most of the music from JRPGs of the PS2 era the overall best soundtracks for me were Digital Devil Saga (1) and Unlimited SaGa.

Klyde- I'm with you in that P2: IS and EP are my favorite Persona games. For me, I could relate to Maya. I share a lot of her personality traits and when EP first came out, I worked in publishing (proofreading for a publishing company was my first job out of college) so I felt like I "got" her. And with IS, I ADORED the masked kid flashbacks. I felt sorry for Eikichi when

he never got a chance to pick the activity, because he always brought his crayons because he wanted everyone to draw pictures of stuff they liked.And I thought the Playstation Persona games had exquisite soundtracks. Okay, Aoba Park in IS was kinda lame, but Mt. Katatsumuri was fantastic. On the other hand, Aoba Park was better in EP and Katatsumuri was meh.

Klyde- I'm with you in that P2: IS and EP are my favorite Persona games. For me, I could relate to Maya. I share a lot of her personality traits and when EP first came out, I worked in publishing (proofreading for a publishing company was my first job out of college) so I felt like I "got" her. And with IS, I ADORED the masked kid flashbacks. I felt sorry for Eikichi when

he never got a chance to pick the activity, because he always brought his crayons because he wanted everyone to draw pictures of stuff they liked.And I thought the Playstation Persona games had exquisite soundtracks. Okay, Aoba Park in IS was kinda lame, but Mt. Katatsumuri was fantastic. On the other hand, Aoba Park was better in EP and Katatsumuri was meh.

You hit the nail on the head as to why P2 IS and EP have proven to draw me in. I am a complete sucker for a compelling cast I can relate too... Typically I am hard pressed to find one character in a game that has me go "wow, I know just how they feel"... yet with P2 its quite the opposite as I found myself relating a bit to everyone (some more so then others).

I am terrible with analysis and am not going to pretend to know jack about good writing or how to flesh out a fictional character until they damn near have a pulse but that is precisely what they pulled off here. Particularly in EP with the exception of ellen and nate, whom I imagine I would tend to "connect" with a bit better had i play P1.

As for the personal chords that the cast strucK with me... Ironically Eikichi proves very relatable for me as well

being the seemingly typical emo hero-type the dude has layers of self-loathing/self-punishing themes floating about him that I make his character very relatable for anyone who has dealt with guilt and sadness (and who hasn't) but far more so for anyone who has dealt with true self-destructive mental issues. In other words, while he maybe the emo-hero of sorts, he becomes something more in EP when you begin to gather that the guy is truly troubled and not just sad or self-hating to fit the role. And if I was a combo of Ekichi and Tatsuya in my teens I certainly grew to become a little bit of Baofu, Katsuya and Maya in my adulthood. I have a terrible sense of style (with long hair and outdated clothes) and smoke like a chimney (Baofu) coupled with Katsuya's insecurity about getting older (while not a major leg of his character traits, it is revealed numerous times) and Maya's overt-positivity.

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In this world is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcedental entity or law? is it like the hand of god hovering above? Perhaps Man has no control even over his own will…